A Message from President & CEO Sarah Krevans to Sutter Health Employees, Physicians
and Volunteers Regarding Recent Developments in the UFCW Case

Sutter
Health President and CEO Sarah Krevans

Many
of you may have seen the local media coverage related to old boxes of data that were
discarded from one of our offsite storage locations. What may not be apparent from
the articles and information readily available about the UFCW case in San Francisco
is how seriously Sutter takes this matter. We identified this problem ourselves and—without
pressure or prompting—self-disclosed the error. We raised our hand.

Sutter’s
commitment to doing the right thing extends even to those situations where coming
forward is likely to cause us additional difficulty, attention or even embarrassment.
This is one of those situations. We understand and appreciate that mistakes do happen,
even mistakes that should not happen or that have the potential to paint us in a bad
light. My commitment as your CEO and my commitment for this organization is that we
will never shy away from the obligation to do the right thing—and that we will never
stop learning from our mistakes.

Our existing protocols failed us.
It’s not enough to just acknowledge the problem. We also need to fix it. Over the
coming weeks and months, we will engage in a robust effort to ensure that our employees
understand their obligations regarding document retention, the impact of litigation
on these retention requirements and the rigor with which we must manage our information.

I
ask that no matter what challenges you face, you focus on always doing the right thing,
even when the decision may be unpopular or present risk. Our ethics guide us at all
times in everything we do, but at no time is the obligation clearer than when you
have to identify a mistake.

While we deeply regret this situation, we remain
firmly committed to our not-for-profit mission to provide exceptional care for our
patients and our communities.